Pixlr Photo Editor For iOS: Super Slick And Super Simple

For quickly punching up a photo on your iPad or iPhone, it’s hard to beat the amazing Snapseed. At other times, you want a little more control, so you may pick something like Photogene. But what if you kinda want both? Then go grab Pixlr.

Pixlr comes from Autodesk, the folks behind Sketchbook for the Mac and iOS, and it’s just about the easiest photo-editing app I ever used. Forget fancy gestures and convoluted interfaces (although there are gestures here if you want) – Pixlr just puts a row of options along the bottom of the screen, and when you tap one, its own set of options adds a bunch more translucent tiles to the screen.

It gets a little crowded, but never when you actually need to see the picture beneath. Cropping? The options to constrain that crop (3:2, 1:1 etc.) are all there, ready to tap. Adding a tilt-shift blur? Again, the options are all to hand, but this time they don’t cover up the image.

It’s all pretty simple and neat. And the simplicity hides a huge wealth of options, including the usual Instagrammatical effects, denoise, sharpening, overlays and even a color-splash option.

The app download is small, and the effects packs can be downloaded as you go, kind of like in-app purchases, but free. Thus you need never clutter up your iPhone or iPad’s storage with a wad of flame-effect overlays if you’re never going to use them.

Pixlr just became my go-to editing app, although we’ll see if I don’t go back to Snapseed soon. Rught now the “plus” version is a buck (normally $3), and there’s also an ad-supported free version, which has less filters.